For a movie that rips off a million older movies about to-the-death game shows set in totalitarian futures, the surprise of Catching Fire is that it’s so perfectly tailored to this particular time and place. Aimed at a generation of kids who are generally perceived as being entitled celebrity wannabes aspiring to their own reality shows, the hero of The Hunger Games is, essentially, a chick who’s really good at being famous. Like a modern celebrity, it hardly matters how or why she’s famous, only what she does with it.

While she has a sweet side braid and bow skills, and does spend significant portions of the film hopping around like Legolas and doing the usual sassy killer Joss Whedon chop-socky routine, what makes Katniss unique is that her main skill is being able to manipulate the media. She knows how to captivate the public by creating Bachelorette-style, is-it-real-or-is-it-for-the-cameras relationship drama, and effortlessly manufactures is-she-or-isn’t-she-pregnant tabloid headlines that grow her brand. Her most important sidekicks? Her sham TV boyfriend and her genius stylist. She’s a publicist’s dream.

“But what I really want to know is… are you gonna go my way?”

Has there ever been another hero’s journey story where one of the pivotal scenes involved creating a red carpet look? In the world of The Hunger Games, staged paparazzi events are a matter of life and death! She’s not here to make friends, she’s here to change the world! The whole thing is so perfectly Post-Empire that it probably gives Bret Easton Ellis a big boner. Katniss offers the promise of being able to triumph over evil just by making great reality TV. I can’t decide whether it’s evil, brilliant, or both.

First things first, the only reason we’re even able to discuss the world of Catching Fire in terms of what it all means is director Francis Lawrence, who actually made Catching Fire unblurry enough to see it, unlike Gary Ross’s work on the last one. Amazing the things you notice about a story when you’re not watching it unfold from the inside of a washing machine

The whole Hunger Games gang is back in Catching Fire – Cat Nips, Pita Bread, Heymitch Jablome, Lenny Kravitz’ Eyeliner, the Fop Lady – along with a few new faces, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing The Guy Who Forgot His Silly Costume, who replaces Futurebeard as Hunger Games’ lead game designer. Pour one out for Futurebeard, you guys. He may be gone, but I’ll never forget his sweet beard.

We catch up with Katniss back in District 12, after her star-making turn in last year’s Hunger Games. She’s a big star now, but she’s mostly gotten back to her old tricks, shooting turkeys in the forbidden zone and hanging with her boyfriend Gail. Somewhere, Pita Bread bakes a cake with her picture on it and cries.

She’s not overtly political, but the government sees her as a threat because of her power, and because the people see her as a symbol of, and we’re told this many, many times, hope. The hope part is constantly repeated but never really explained (because she didn’t want to kill her boyfriend to please the government, I guess?). In any case, the film does a pretty great job depicting the paranoia of living in a totalitarian state. It’s not so much that day-to-day life is so much more difficult or violent, necessarily, it’s the stressful uncertainty of it all, the constant gossip and whispers, the way the state can just decide to kill some people one day over hearsay, a whim, one perceived slight. The state as unstable boyfriend. The realistic world of totalitarianism is so unexpected, it’s not the kind of thing you expect to see in a PG-13 teenybopper movie aimed at wiener kids.

Cat Nips and Pita Bread embark on a 12-district barnstorming tour, part of their duties as Hunger Games winners, where they have to find a balance between maintaining the public’s trust in a time of strife and keeping the government happy so their families don’t get murdered. All the while, Pita has to grapple with being completely smitten with Cat Nips, even when he knows she’s only pretending. It’s easy to identify with him because no one’s easier to fall for than Jennifer Lawrence.

At some point, the government decides the way to deal with Katniss is through a “quarter quell,” a new Hunger Games where the contestants are all chosen from past winners, like Chopped Champions. After opening so realistically, as the actual games begin, the film starts to descend into popcorny hokum. We get introduced to a whole new crop of contestants, who basically get introduced as baseball cards, complete with attributes and characterizations as narrowly-defined as Snow White’s dwarves – sneezy, brainy, stabby, and slut! One guy is supposedly an expert at “underwater combat.” Ooh, will we get to see this in action??? Oh, the suspense. Chekhov’s Trident, I call it. The only good thing about it is Stanley Tucci as the TV host master of ceremonies, with his giant teeth and fourth grade girl’s ponytail. My God, he’s magnificent. I could watch an entire movie of just this character.

Enjoyable acting, unfortunately, does not extend to most of the new characters, including a thoroughly grating Jena Malone and that blond guy from Blue Mountain State, whose cheesy Ken doll look always makes me think I’m watching the setup for a gay porn or something. Amanda Plummer, aka Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction, is even worse. She plays one of the brainy smurfs (autistic smurf, specifically), and at one point during the games she just starts muttering “Tick Tock”, which of course is actually an important epiphany once the others figure out what the hell she’s talking about. BOOM, GOLDBLUM’D. Also, if your only acting shtick is muttering like an insane person, maybe it’s time for a new shtick? If the goal was to get us praying for her death, mission accomplished.

Katniss eventually becomes a symbol and inspires the populace and blah blah blah. The games themselves are much more dull than the build up, and tone-wise feels like it belongs in a different movie. But it’s not terrible. Much better executed than in the last movie. It was all fine until they decided to squeeze a Christ metaphor in there.

For the love of God, action directors, depicting your protagonist as an arms spread, martyring, sacrificial Christ figure is easily the most played out, least insightful, host hoary hackneyed f*cking thing you could ever do. SUPERMAN IS JESUS! ROBOCOP IS JESUS! NEO IS JESUS! KATNISS IS JESUS!

IF EVERYONE IS JESUS BEING JESUS CEASES TO BE INTERESTING. STOP IT.

Katniss is an interesting character, a reality show heroine for the reality show age, and Catching Fire is weirdly insightful in its critiques of fascism. Oddly, it’s the actual premise of the Hunger Games, the part where a bunch of kids have to fight to the death on a computerized island, that holds it back from being something more. Catching Fire ends on a cliffhanger, which is ballsyish, but also blatantly capitalistic. I guess we’ll pay again to see how this plays out. But will we be happy about it? Only if it involves lots more Stanley Tooch.

Join The Discussion

I was hoping the new film would introduce a new games-master who insisted that all the female contestants wear teeny tiny bikinis.
This would prove he was EEVVVIILLLL and sexist and his plan would be soundly rejected by everyone as unworthy of the Hunger Games tradition (after about 15 minutes of footage of JLaw and the other combat babes bouncing around).

The first one looked terrible and was terrible, but I’d watch Jennifer Lawrence in a feature length remake of 2 Girls 1 Cup so I couldn’t resist. Glad to hear this one is watchable for reasons other than my sweet, sweet J Law.

The weirdest thing about the first movie to me was how the hell did all the strong people with actual skills lose a war against the foppish assholes that spend all day slathering their faces with clown makeup or grooming their intricate facial hair.

was not. it’s just… bigger than katniss. i sorta thought that was a strength of the whole series. she depicts how one girl sees these things, but gives the other characters lives within this world independent of katniss. the third book is when you see how unimportant she really is to the whole thing. she’s like the crispus attics of their revolution.

My former roomates went out to get pizza one night as I went to bed. When I got home from work there was a McDonald’s bag and a pizza box on the counter. When I asked what happened, they said they went to the pizza place and got hungry while they were waiting, so they got McDick’s to tide them over.

Man, I wanted to post a link to a clip of Liz Lemon saying “I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to be number one” in concert with Deborah from MILF Island, but YouTube really let me down. Anyway, this review reads worse than a “B.” And I still lol @ “Haymitch Jablome.”

The games in the catching fire book are also the least interesting part. it starts to feel repetitive, but that’s sorta the goal i think, like, she can’t get away. the movie didn’t properly convey what felt like helplessness in the book. she seems more in control in the movie than in the book, where, to her, the important things were more internal than external.

also, it’s been a little while, but i don’t remember why the three finger salute is a thing, and i saw it in the first movie but it just came out of nowhere with no warning and now i feel like a girl who has been shockered.

Interesting thoughts, Vince, but, if you will recall from the first film, Katniss was encouraged to seduce audiences to gain supporters who might send her important items as she fights for her life. She has no desire for the spotlight – she’s not trying to win a date or 15 minutes of fame. She’s trying to survive. She’s only in this position because she wanted to save her sister from almost certain death and she remains in this position because an oppressed group of people see her as as a symbol of hope for the future, as someone who defied the odds. So, say what you want about the film itself, but please do not reduce her character to “a chick who’s really good a being famous”.

11.23.13 at 1:06 am

Vince Mancini

None of what you just contradicts the fact that her main skill is manipulating her fame. She’s good at being famous. It doesn’t matter whether she wants to be. She is, and she’s good at it.

“Amazing the things you notice about a story when you’re not watching it unfold from the inside of a washing machine.”

This one was partially shot in IMAX format, and you now those big, bulky IMAX cameras don’t fit in any washing machine.

Having said that, saw this last night and agree it was much better than the first. Pretty faithful to the book too, if you’re worried about that sort of thing.

Now, in the next two films let’s see how faithful they are to the partial clusterfuck that is the third book. I’m hoping they change some things, or at least better justify why certain events take place. I know that was vague, but, spoilers etc etc.

So it looks like they invested in a tripod for this one, but didn’t use it enough. Though they used it more than they did in the first one.

I’m old and don’t understand this trend in cinematography of using shaky-cam during intimate scenes where two people are sitting still talking to each other. What’s more, this movie was shot on film and partly in IMAX. The lightest camera they could have used is probably 25 pounds with a film magazine, which means they had to shoot shoulder-mounted, at best. And you just don’t get those stupid, jiggly shots from a shoulder. They’re doing it on purpose and deliberately and it drives me absolutely crazy. The only thing shaky-cam does outside of where it belongs (scenes with explosions) is remind me that someone is sitting there with a camera. STOP IT HOLLYWOOD.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they put the shaky-cam in during post, which is even more outrageous.

I enjoyed the movie I had low expectations as I was expecting one of those dumb Twilight romance between star crossed lovers in an interchangeable plot line. The fact that the love story was not the center of this movie and that the plot actually had some depth to it surprised me.